our bucket list

What we like to do and what we’d like to do define us much better than any cut-and-dried bio ever could. We drafted this list while huddling in our sleeping bags on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, seeking refuge from a storm that raged outside. Even as we cross some items off the list, we hope to add many others. If you have a bucket list or have done some amazing things you think would fit on this one, please share! We’re always looking for new ways to expand our horizons.

Travel for a year continuously

Backpack(S backpacked through South America for 8 months with her sister; D did a similar 5-month trip)

Visit each of the seven continents (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica)

Live abroad

Hike the Appalachian Trail

Hike Israel’s National Trail

Run a marathon (this is more for S; D prefers team sports to running)

Advanced open-water SCUBA certification (also S; the one time D went scuba diving he couldn’t equalize the pressure and had a bad nose bleed/headache for several days afterwards)

Go skydiving

Bungee jump(D’s gone twice – once in Denmark and once in Costa Rica; S has no desire to ever go)

Do a long-distance bike trip (This is S’s impetus; D very rarely gets on a bike)

Explore ancient ruins(We’ve both been to Machu Picchu; S has also been to the Pyramids in Egypt, which remain on D’s list)

Read all the books on the BBC 100 Greatest Book list

Read Don Quixote in Spanish (still on S’s list; D read it twice – once in a college course and again during his year of study abroad in Madrid) and the Russian classics in Russian (D’s only read a handful and is rightly ashamed that he can’t cross this off yet)

Take a hand-to-hand circus class (also S; D had never even heard of this before)

Sleep in a castle (for S; D checked this off in Spain, where there is a whole luxury hotel chain that includes castles, monasteries, and the palaces where the Spanish kings stayed when they traveled around their realm)

See an opera in Italy (S checked this box with her grandma when she turned 16)

I would love to do conservation work in Africa, Asia and South America with them being so ecologically diverse and also do the Inca Trail in Peru, I’d also love to kayak through the canals of venice. There are many more, my list often grows when I read lonely planet :)

Which 7? The list for the seven wonders of the ancient world is pretty definitive (and most of the wonders on it no longer exist), but we’ve seen way too many variations for the “seven wonders of the modern world” – which seven are on your list?

Yes, most of the ancient wonders sadly don’t exist. We’ve taken bits from the old and new ‘modern’ list, and they are:
Great Wall of China, Petra, Machu Pichu, Taj Mahal, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Colloseum and Pyramids of Giza. We’ve seen all but the first 3 in my list.

We’d recommend Machu Picchu before the other two – it’s perched on some precarious fault lines and an earthquake or two will likely render it either inaccessible or nonexistent in the near future. And it’s definitely worth seeing.

Very, very, very cool… This has inspired me to write a bucket list with my fiancé… We have been traveling for almost 2 years and have done many of the things on the list… do you think its allowed to write things on the list you have already done? ;) You seem a bit more “adventurous” as I don’t think I could hang with sky diving, bungee jumping… all of the scary thing but many listed are great ideas. I don’t see any language learning on here.. unless I missed it? Wouldn’t it be cool to learn common conversation in Russian or Mandarin? Or how about getting into Handstand? These are two of mine…. ; I wish you luck and look forward to hearing more!

Hey, thanks for your comment! Languages are on there (#24) — S has just started taking Russian, which would be her third foreign language; D speaks three, Russian among them, but would like to add a couple more. We had a similar dilemma when we first wrote this page as to whether we should list the cool things we had already done. We wound up including some and leaving off others. The ones we included were things that we had always wanted to do — backpack and live abroad, for example — and had checked off our individual bucket lists before we met each other. The ones we left off were things that we had done that might have made the bucket list, but which we happened to do without really trying to cross off a life list.

We’d love to have you guys come over to Yonderlist! We support travel bloggers by posting links to your blog and getting you more exposure. All you need to do is set up a profile and review some of the places you’ve been. Good luck with your blog and safe journeys!

Hello! I just found your blog via Mama Mgeni. What an amazing long bucket list! As an Australian myself, I think you should definitely come to Australia sooner rather than later, and also add ‘go hiking in New Zealand’ to your list because it’s so beautiful over there. When you come to Australia (not if, but when) the things you must do include ‘The Overland Track’ in Tasmania, a visit to The Kimberley region in Western Australia, and maybe a walk in the Northern Territory. Good luck with completing everything on this list! I love people with big, exciting, adventurous dreams x Isabel

Hi Isabel! Thanks for your thoughtful comment. We haven’t looked at our list in a while and it will definitely need an update soon. We’ll add the items you suggest — neither of us has been to Australia or New Zealand and we both want to go. We’ve always thought of these sorts of lists as open-ended and aspirational. We hope to do as many of the things on here as we can but we also hope to never finish the list — life is too short to be able to check off all the things that are worth doing.

My name is Onin, Podcast Program Assistant for James Thomas, host and creator of the expat and immigrant focused podcast Four Seas One Family. James is an American who now lives in Taipei.

Here in Four Seas One Family, we want to build bridges and not walls. In the podcast we tend to highlight how foreign nationals adjusted to just about anything from the countries that they are not a native of. Our goal is to take out any hesitation or negativity and let listeners know that people regardless of nation, have a lot more in common than they think.

I’d also like you to know that we’re currently looking for more people for James to interview in Four Seas One Family and thought you would make an excellent guest for the show. I came across your blog through expatsblog.com and when I went through your page I couldn’t stop reading your posts(I loved “The Curse of the Congo” post)! That said, we would like to formally invite you to join our podcast for a short interview. We guarantee it’ll be a fun and and memorable experience for you.

I do hope you would consider being a guest at our show. Your experiences while living overseas can help those who are thinking about living abroad or those who are already living abroad find happiness while on their life journey.

If you agree to be on the show you can either contact me through my e-mail or you can go directly to the scheduler in the link below.